Parenting during COVID-19: Why my family has embraced multiplayer video games

As a nature-loving and emotions-focused therapist, I was naturally drawn to outdoor, social, and sensory activities when my children were younger. My kids would spend a day muddy and free, exploring with whatever friends could join us. I felt a knee-jerk aversion to screens for children.

Children, like my own, with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), have a tendency to get dysregulated after extensive time with screens. They need to move their bodies to get back on track emotionally. Video games also carry the risk of addiction.

However, almost every middle schooler I have ever supported as a therapist has listed multiplayer video games as one of their coping mechanisms. Whether it was in China, in Community Mental Health in Denver, or in my private practice in Boulder, children universally delighted in and treasured their time playing games with friends online. Otherwise glum tweens and teens would light up when I asked them to describe their favorite video game. In the therapy room, I regularly leveraged this beloved topic to broach others, such as anxiety and loneliness.

I was fully aware of the joy and mental health benefits that multiplayer video games offered to my clients (at least from their perspectives!).

I was also fully aware that I had an inherent bias against children playing online rather than in person.

During early quarantine, I decided to explore to what level my reticence to embrace multiplayer video games for my own kids was actually a negative distortion. When my children are playing with friends in the backyard, I feel satisfied and calm. When they are playing video games with the same friends and chatting excitedly into their microphone, I find myself on edge!

This blatant contradiction alerted me that I was probably distorting reality through emotional reasoning or all-or-nothing thinking. When we confront our cognitions with CBT, we have to have some humility about our convictions. Just because we believe something strongly does not make it true. Turns out, I was devaluing video games and discounting all the positives that they had to offer!

More and more studies are coming out confirming what tweens and teens have long held to be true. Online multiplayer games are providing an accessible platform for even the most socially uncomfortable tween and teen to have reciprocal conversations, interpret social interactions, and be leaders among their peers. Young people learn and communicate rules through these platforms, and develop meaningful relationships based on trust and mutual experiences. Gamers must learn to control frustrations to maintain healthy relationships. Players are in fact having complex interactions that are helping them grow as social and emotional beings!

This benefit is especially poignant to the ASD community, whose members can find the gaming world to be a more hospitable environment for their social differences.

Once I was able to dispute my cognitive distortion around multiplayer video games, I could welcome them more authentically into our family routines and values. The pandemic was the perfect moment to make this change, when my children’s social development could otherwise have stalled due to isolation.

Letting go of a cognitive distortion can open the doors to growth and flexibility.

Learn about how ASD Counseling at South Boulder Counseling can help you here.